Ex-Gay Watch

Box Turtle Bulletin offers coverage-in-depth of this week’s angry war of words fired by far-right culture warriors Peter LaBarbera and Stephen Bennett against Exodus International and its president, Alan Chambers.

Chambers has stated for some time that “change” is slow (if it happens at all) among ex-gays. When word of this reached the mainstream press this week, LaBarbera and Bennett became outraged that their own message of easy, instantaneous heterosexuality had been undermined in some very public forums.

None of the three activists has yet documented a gay past to XGW’s satisfaction, and LaBarbera in fact claims never to have been either gay or ex-gay. So the credibility of all three regarding change of sexual attraction or identity is tenuous at best.

While Chambers speaks from the stated experience of Exodus member ministers, LaBarbera and Bennett demonstrate a vaporous, blustery preachiness that is heavy on flattery toward God and lacking in substance. LaBarbera, for example, speaks of “allegiance to a holy, almighty God”; apparently he could not find Bible verses to support his contention that dishonest sexual behavior is the Christian Way, nor could he find legitimate medical or scientific research equating sexual orientation with lust. LaBarbera pontificates that “ExGayWatch” (sic), in particular, is “decidedly evil” but fails to explain how it is evil to hold ex-gays accountable to measurable facts and healthy therapeutic outcomes.

Ex-Gay Watch sends congratulations to Bennett and LaBarbera — may this cat fight bring them a fleeting rise in contributions from people who don’t know any better.

Peterson Toscano, a survivor of Exodus’ flagship residential ex-gay program called Love In Action, commended Exodus this week for what he perceives to be public gestures toward ethical and spiritual renewal.

But in doing so, Toscano accidentally discovered that what’s not happening may be more important.

In the past few years Exodus has intentionally shifted their focus to target youth with their own Exodus Youth MySpace page and of course Love in Action’s Refuge program.

As of this moment if you go to the Refuge site, www.asafeplace.org, it looks much more understated than I ever remember it. I cannot easily find a reference to Refuge on Love in Action’s pages. It is not listed as one of LIA’s current programs, and I can’t find a link on Exodus Youth. Has this program quietly ended? If so, this is a BIG shift.

Update: Since I posted this earlier today the Refuge page has been taken down. You can see a cached page of what I saw this morning.

Archive.org reveals a timeline of growth at the Refuge web site, followed by gradual change after a teen-ager named Zach revealed in mid-2005 that he was being forced against his will to reside in the LIA/R program.

Has Love In Action closed, or merely de-emphasized, its youth indoctrination project?

We’re trying to find out.

Christine Bakke and Peterson Toscano are co-founders of Beyond Ex-Gay and co-hosts (with Soulforce) of an ex-gay survivors’ conference scheduled to coincide with the Exodus annual conference at the end of June.

Bakke and Toscano have invited the ex-gay leadership of Exodus International to a private dinner June 29. Their open letter to Exodus is posted at the Beyond Ex-Gay web site. Here’s an excerpt:

Too often once we leave your programs, you never hear about our lives and what happens to us. Most ministries do not have aftercare programs or any formal means to follow-up on participants. Some stories you do not get to hear. If you do, our stories can be simplified by the press or infused with anger or hurt. In hopes of giving you the opportunity to hear about our experiences and the harm that we felt came to us as a result of our pursuit of an ex-gay life, we would like to invite you to join us for a private dinner on Friday, June 29, 2007.

This dinner may present Exodus with an opportunity not only to learn about the actual outcomes of Exodus programs from those “tens of thousands” whom Exodus claims as graduates, but also to reconsider aspects of Exodus programs that achieve the opposite of Exodus’ stated objectives.

After all, why should Exodus continue to sponsor local programs that merely create ever-growing numbers of openly gay people of faith?

The American Family Association (AFA) continues to sing in the chorus of propaganda against the pending Hate Crimes Prevention Act (HR 1592). Their email pleas have become so numerous and shrill that Snopes.com has added one of their recent Action Alerts to it’s database of Urban Legends.

For those not familiar, Snopes.com investigates the various wild emails you may get, more often than not forwarded to you from that particular friend or relative who seems to believe everything is a conspiracy. They research the claims, try to determine their origin and list them on their website with a determination as to their accuracy. They’ve been at it for years and are highly respected as the place to go before you mail your old sneakers to Nike with the expectation of a new pair in return or protest a bill that is supposed to add a tax of 5 cents for every email sent or received.

The AFA claims about the Hate Crimes Prevention Act are so absurd they  have landed in Snopes territory with the other urban legends:

A California lawsuit which is now headed to the U.S. Supreme Court would make the use of the words “natural family,” “marriage” and “union of a man and a woman” a “hate speech” crime in government workplaces. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has already ruled in favor of the plaintiffs.

CNN and The Washington Post both reported that General Peter Pace, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, was fired because of his publicly expressed moral opposition to homosexual behavior.

A bill now before Congress (H.R. 1592 / S. 1105) would criminalize negative comments concerning homosexuality, such as calling the practice of homosexuality a sin from the pulpit, a “hate crime” punishable by a hefty fine and time in prison. This dangerous legislation would take away our freedom of speech and our freedom of religion.

Snopes lists all three as false.

Read the full report here.  Watch the AFA backtrack at high speed in their rebuttal here.

Anglican ex-gay group Zacchaeus Fellowship is demanding its say when the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada meets to vote on whether to allow same-sex blessings. At last year’s Synod, a motion to include “those who identify as ex-gay or lesbian” in the 2007 debate was defeated, to which the Fellowship responded with the following plea (in a statement signed by Mario Bergner, among others):

Our voices have been silenced and not heard in the Anglican Church of Canada; you have not paid heed to us. Today, we ask that you would not betray us by passing these motions allowing for the blessing of same-sex unions within the Anglican Church of Canada without first hearing our voices and weighing our stories. We ask that you would not pass these motions and commit yourselves instead to listening to our voices before making any move as a Church. Let us all acknowledge the love and lordship of Christ who makes all things new.

In an open letter to this year’s Anglican Synod, which begins meeting today in Winnipeg, the Zacchaeus Fellowship continues to press for a hearing, this time with a frankly outrageous attempt to discredit gay voices in the debate:

But we also consider it necessary to ask if you are aware of the gay activist handbook After the Ball, published in 1989. It shamelessly describes manipulative tactics such as its Principle 6, “Give Potential Protectors a Just Cause,” which recommends “casting gays as society’s victims and inviting straights to be their protectors.” It explains, “For this to work, however, we must make it easier for responsive straights to assert and explain their new protective feelings. Few straight women, and fewer straight men, will be bold enough to defend homosexuality per se. Most would rather attach their awakened protective impulse to some principle of justice or law, some general desire for consistent and fair treatment in society” (p.187).

Just what is being implied here? Don’t trust the gays because they are simply part of a political conspiracy? The Anglican proponents of gay blessings are learning “manipulative tactics” directly from a 1989 manual? The shameless manipulation is in Zacchaeus’s attempt to malign and dehumanize gays with such tenuous links. The open letter continues:

The apostle Jude warned against “malcontents” who indulge their own lusts; “they are bombastic in speech, flattering people to their own advantage.” Many of us in the Zacchaeus Fellowship were gay activists and played that card ourselves in our unreformed lives.

Manipulative, lustful, shameless: With such slanderous attacks on Canada’s gay Anglicans, the Zacchaeus Fellowship excludes itself from the debate.

With years of “therapy,” Exodus president Alan Chambers says, he has mostly conquered his own attraction to men. And he will no doubt emphasize his “heterosexuality” at Exodus’ annual conference in southern California at the end of this month. (A conference of survivors of ex-gay programs will be held nearby.)

But today’s Los Angeles Times reports that Chambers has “come to resent the term ‘ex-gay’: It’s too neat, implying a clean break with the past, when he still struggles at times with homosexual temptation. ‘By no means would we ever say change can be sudden or complete.’”

Reporter Stephanie Simon sees Chambers’ concession as a sign that “gay-rights activists and those who see homosexuality as a sinful disorder are starting to reach agreement on some practical points.” But while the Times article notes changes of attitude occurring elsewhere among religious conservatives, it fails to document such change at Exodus.

Read more…

Inspired by an LA Times article about an upcoming professional convention that will evaluate the safety and effectiveness of ex-gay “therapies,” CNN’s Situation Room aired an interview this afternoon with Alan Chambers, president of Exodus International, and Jack Drescher, distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.

Correspondent Mary Snow inaccurately states that “Exodus International president Alan Chambers says he has overcome his attraction to men,” while Chambers repeats something that he has said before, albeit not often enough nor among the audiences that most need to hear it: that so-called “change” is not instantaneous.

Read more…

Time is running short to register for The Ex-Gay Survivor’s Conference to be held June 29-July 1, 2007, in Irvine, California.

Why hold a conference of former ex-gays? As the conference web site states: Creating a communal space for ex-gay survivors to tell their stories allows us to share what led us into an ex-gay lifestyle and ways we have been able to recover from it.

Workshop facilitators and speakers include:

• Christine Bakke, ex-gay survivor and co-founder of Beyond Ex-Gay
• Darlene Bogle, former Exodus leader and author of A Christian Lesbian Journey: A Continuation of Long Road to Love
• Jim Burroway, founder of Box Turtle Bulletin
• Jason Cianciotto, research director for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
• Musicians Jason & deMarco
• Rev. Phil Lawson, United Methodist minister and veteran of the 1960′s civil rights movement
• Jeff Lutes, MS, LPC, executive director of Soulforce and licensed psychotherapist
• Jallen Rix, Ph.D., ex-gay survivor, Doctor of Education in Sexology and musician who focuses on healthy sexuality and recovery from ex-gay experiences
• Peterson Toscano, ex-gay survivor and performance artist
• Rev. Nancy Wilson, moderator of Metropolitan Community Churches

Topics include:

• Building Healthy Relationships after an Ex-Gay Experience
• Telling Our Stories Creatively: Writing, Blogging, Video, etc.
• What the Bible Says & Doesn’t Say About Homosexuality
• Courting Justice: Ex-Gays and the Law
• Mental Health Professionals Round Table: Best Practices from the Ex-gay Survivor’s Conference
• Impacting the Media: Successful Strategies for Sharing Your Story with Confidence

There will be a film forum hosted by directors, including:

• God and Gays (Luane Beck & Kim Clark)
• For Such a Time as This (Lisa Darden)
• This is What Love in Action Looks Like (Morgan Jon Fox)
• Fish Can’t Fly (Tom Murray)
• Me and God (Esteban Rael)

I will be attending the conference as an audience member and supporter. I am eager to meet many former ex-gays, their families and friends, and the readers of XGW. We can look forward to a weekend of personal journeys of struggle and personal and spiritual renewal.

For more information and to register, visit Beyond Ex-Gay.

Addendum: Related Media Coverage

Ex-gay or just exploited?
By Marla Jo Fisher, Orange County Register, June 17, 2007

Alan Chambers will be appearing on CNN tonight. The Exodus President will be interviewed by Wolf Blitzer on The Situation Room, following an article in today’s LA Times, in which Chambers disavows the “ex-gay” label:

It’s too neat, implying a clean break with the past, when he still struggles at times with homosexual temptation. “By no means would we ever say change can be sudden or complete,” Chambers said.

The article claims “new ground” in the debate over ex-gay therapy, hailing “new agreement” between ex-gays and their critics. The show airs between 4.00 and 6.00pm EST.

Not long ago, the White House issued a picture of Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife holding their new grandchild, Samuel David Cheney. Samuel is the child of the Cheney’s daughter Mary, and her partner, Heather Poe.

As we reported, ex-gay Stephen Bennett was so incensed that the White House would refer to the Cheney’s daughter and her partner as the parents that he issued a press release which stated emphatically that only biological parents were “REAL” parents. [emphasis in original] This prompted a principled rebuke from Exodus president Alan Chambers, the adoptive father of two children, and a less than adult counter comment by Bennett here on XGW.

For his part, Bennett wrote an after the fact post on his blog trying to explain that only same-sex parents were a sinful charade, saying this exonerated him from Chamber’s (and our) claims. He never did explain why this clarification was in an obscure section of his website and not in the press release itself.

Now it appears that Bennett isn’t so convinced of the worth of adoptive parents after all. He has made a similar statement in yesterday’s entry of his blog, the subject of which is the recent same-sex marriage vote in Massachusetts.

The Goodridge lesbians – plantiffs [sic] who started this “gay” marriage mess – broke up an left one another only two years after saying, “I do.”

Obviously — they didn’t and a ten year old girl was left in the wake of these self-centered lesbians’ destruction, while she has a REAL father somewhere, out there.

Just because the government is pandering to the P-Town crowd mentality, real marriage has been degraded and devalued and “playing house” has been elevated to “legal” status.

Again, emphasis on the “REAL” father, i.e. the biological father. Certainly after the ordeal two weeks ago Bennett should be aware of how callous it is for him to keep emphasizing the idea that biological parents are the only “REAL” parents — regardless of his opinion of same-sex relationships.

Bennett also makes sport of the fact that the couple’s relationship ended after two years, calling them “self-centered lesbians” and cracking a sarcastic joke about their vows. No one should have to point out the fact that same-sex couples are not behind the overwhelming popularity of no-fault divorce in this country. Marriages can and do fail, sometimes after only a brief time. It’s unfortunate to say the least, but it is not a gay or lesbian issue.